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As I went to sleep tonight, I recited a mantra, "I will stabilize". I also firmly fixed in my mind that as soon as I began dreaming, I would know that I was dreaming.

This worked. I spent some time drifting, and then a dream began. I was lying in bed, and the lights were on. I looked to my left. There were 3 tiny, glowing playing cards floating in the space above my head. I thought, "Yes, I'm dreaming," and snatched the playing cards from where they were floating. It's hard to explain, but the cards were a cue for me - it was specifically seeing the cards that made me lucid. I don't remember what suites the cards were, only that they were 1/4 the size of normal playing cards, they were glowing, and they immediately induced lucidity.

I got out of bed, and my bedroom was very different and not at all like my real bedroom. The carpet was worn out, and an ugly shade of tannish orangy brown. My "dream room" carpet is always this ugly color, for some reason. The door was in the wrong place, and led to a hallway that doesn't exist, and there was no furniture besides my bed. The bed was a twin, but in real life, I have a full. I said, "Stabilize!". I went to the door and tried to visualize that as soon as I went through it, I would be in a rainforest. I tried very hard to convince myself of this.

When I went through the door, everything was dark. I saw shadowy forms that hinted that I was in another room. I got frustrated and lost lucidity.

I woke up, grumbled, and tried WILD. I got past the initial wave and felt as if I was sinking into my bed. I sat up out of my body. I tried to open my eyes, but it was very hard, and I felt like I was opening my physical eyes. I was really tired and had work in the morning, so I gave up on it and lapsed back into unawareness. I dreamed that my head had made a huge dent in my pillow, so now my pillow had 2 lumps of stuffing on either side and nothing in the middle. I tossed and turned (in the dream) and tried to make it comfortable somehow.

I dreamed I was shopping at a store. I've never been there in my waking life. There was a desk on a top shelf that I was interested in - it was $50, and I thought it would make a good room divider. But my cell phone was malfunctioning badly. The screen came off (how?) and then it got hot to touch and melted. I got some of the melted screen on my finger, and it burned me. I kept thinking about how frustrated I was that all of my money now had to go toward buying a new phone. I needed a smartphone, too, so it was going to be expensive.

I woke up. I tried some visualizations. I visualized a room full of dolls, where each doll represented a DC I knew. I visualized putting a doll on the floor and making it grow to full size. (I was not asleep at this time). I began drifting off, but the visualization didn't completely take hold, and I didn't become lucid. Instead, the room became the room of a woman with a group of really odd friends. My dream followed their antics, but I don't recall any specifics on what they were.

Review:
Dream clues:
- Playing cards (instant lucidity)
- My pillow doesn't have stuffing. It's a memory foam pillow.
- Unfamiliar store, without recalling how I got there
- Malfunctioning phone (malfunctioning electronics)
- Spectator perspective

Edit: Believe it or not... I actually figured out the playing cards while I was riding the train home. In my dream, they were glowing like they were lit up LEDs. On the train ride home, there's an installation where LED playing cards flash by the train windows. I tend to stare out the window at them because I'm bored and they're something to look at... which means I'm also staring at my reflection. So, since mirrors instantly make me lucid (for some reason), apparently my brain linked the playing cards with my reflection strongly enough that just looking at a card makes me lucid.

Original dream dated 07/20/2008:

Dreamed that we (my family) were in a house packing. I was being followed around by a very annoying blonde-haired little girl who had several dolls. She wanted some ceramic stuff packed (dolls and tea pots) and I was trying to pack them carefully so they didn't break, but she was being very careless with them. In addition, the house we were in spooked me very badly. It always felt like something was there watching you, and some rooms were so bad, nobody would turn their back on them. It was bitterly cold in the dream, even though when I woke up the apartment was actually quite warm.

Had a second dream:
Dreamed that I was helping liquidate another store that was going out of business, only this one was full of odds and ends and books, and I had to sleep there overnight, which was very uncomfortable. I was very tired and everything, but the boss kept coming in and asking if we'd gotten everything sold yet, packed up and sent out yet, etc.
Then, my family was looking at different houses to rent (in the dream), one house had sort of like a river with a bridge across it, it was really cool but expensive (and the room they were renting was not large enough). The houses were within walking distance to a cool thrift shop.
Anyway, it was the 4th of July and my family wanted to go see fireworks. We wound up climbing up on this embankment with a bunch of other people. I dreamed that my aunt was driving the car to the bridge where we eventually climbed the embankment, only the car was being pulled along by cables and beads of light, and I kept wondering how we didn't fall off the bridge.
After the fireworks show, there was a woman putting on a juggling performance, only it was almost more like belly dancing. There was a story and a theme, with music. I somehow managed to get digital recordings of the music, and the performer said it was o.k. to share them with other people who'd seen the show and wanted the music.